The Paris Wedding, page 29
Tess straightened. “Suppose we’d better eat this dinner then.”
Rachael knew her sister wouldn’t say anything more, it wasn’t in her nature, but she could see contentment settling in her. Cautiously, because Tess didn’t count chickens, but settling all the same.
* * *
At dinner, Tess and Joel asked Felix and Emily if they’d like to live here.
Rachael watched their disbelief become excitement, then the bargaining that ensued about who would have what room, while the baby threw rice on the floor. Rachael was full of happy dread: she wanted to go, and yet never leave. When Felix started to say that Emily could have Aunty Rachael’s room, and Tess swiftly told him, “No, Aunty Rachael needs her room for when she visits us,” she had to get up from the table to fetch some water, so they wouldn’t all see her crying about it.
After dinner, she told Tess and Joel to leave the washing up. Slowly, she cleared the kitchen, putting away each dish in its proper place, saying goodbye to them too. When she next came back, who knew how Tess would have organized things? It was her sister’s place now.
The clock showed nine thirty when she finished. The children were all asleep, and Joel and Tess had turned in too. Rachael opened the back door and stood among the gardenias at the edge of the verandah. She caught a waft of familiar scent. One creamy flower had opened in the center of the row. She bent and trailed a finger along its silken petals. Her acrylics might be gone, but her nails were smooth. She hadn’t bitten them in days. Sammy would be proud of her.
Her mobile buzzed and Sammy’s face appeared on the screen.
“Hey,” Rachael said. “I was going to call you tomorrow morning.”
“Why are you whispering?”
Rachael smiled—at the great fields running into the darkling sky, at the hidden waterhole and its memories, at the scent of gardenias; the joys of a home she would leave and yet carry with her everywhere. The idea was a just-lit flame, vulnerable to disturbance.
“Everyone’s asleep,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine. I actually have something to tell you, and I’m not sure you’ll be happy about it.”
In fact, Rachael was deeply worried. Sammy was at a low point and her instincts said this wasn’t the time to be going away. But perhaps there would never be a good time.
“I’m selling the farm to Tess and Joel, and I’m going overseas, at least for a while.”
Rachael thought Sammy’s exclamation was probably audible at the Dish. It took five minutes to explain that she didn’t have any details yet, but hoped to go for six months, maybe longer if she could find some work and top up her savings.
Sammy was silent for a time when Rachael had finished. Finally, she said, “I’m completely jealous. But it sounds like something you need to do. You’ll probably meet some gorgeous prince and he’ll whisk you away.”
“Yeah, right.” Rachael laughed, but she was done with the idea of being whisked away. “But you called me. How are you?”
“Well . . .” That one word was stuffed with relief and hope and a dozen other things. “I have something to tell you.”
“Mmm?”
“Marty called from Sydney. I don’t want to pretend things are great. But he’s coming back. That’s something, right?”
After they’d ended the call, Rachael leaned back on her hands, closed her eyes, and tried to record this moment on some kind of internal tape. The faint background pulse of insects calling, the rustle of tiny creatures in the dry leaves, the wind blowing dust against the shed, then gusting across the verandah. The breeze pushed on her cheek, like she was a sailing ship bound for the sea. Home had been her anchor, and now it was time to cast off. Someday she would come back and tell her mother what she had done.
When she finally went inside, the study door was ajar, the computer still running. Going in to shut it down, she found a single email in her in-box. Her heart trembled when she read the sender as Ferranti, Antonio. The subject said: Your letter.
Should she open it now and spend the night dwelling on whatever it contained? She remembered her mother’s letter. Courageous, it had said. With one eye open, she clicked the email and found only a single line.
Got your letter. Call me. A
With a shaking hand, Rachael found his battered card and dialed the number. When the click of pickup came and Antonio’s voice answered gruffly, she couldn’t speak.
“Who is it?” he demanded after the too-long pause.
“It’s me,” she rushed out.
“Rachael.” Surprise in his voice. And warmth. And something else. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
She bit her lip. “I tried to call you before, but after it kept going to voice mail I figured you didn’t want to speak to me, and I’d write instead.”
“My phone always does that when I’m away.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve been in Africa the last few weeks. I just got back today. I probably have fifty voice mails waiting, but I read your letter instead of listening to them.”
“I meant it,” she said simply, thinking of all the apologies and confession she’d poured into the letter, not expecting she would ever hear from him.
“I guess you can see the bad things in people after all, even if it’s yourself,” he said. A pause. “That job is still going if you want it.”
Rachael began to protest. She didn’t want him to think that was why she’d written.
“And I sent you something in the post,” he interrupted. “If you like it, I want you to call me back.”
* * *
A week later, when Rachael collected the post from Milton, it included a small white package addressed in neat ballpoint handwriting. Tearing it open, she found a card of silk and gold lace-covered buttons, the same ones she’d admired that day in Paris. On the back, Antonio had written, La Mercerie des Rêves, Paris.
Rachael cradled them to her chest, relief and amazement competing for supremacy. He’d remembered. And though she and Antonio were far from the promising beginning they’d had, she sensed there was room to move forward.
She didn’t know if she would ever use these buttons, but no matter where she went, she wanted to remember. She searched in her drawer until she found the memory card he’d given her at the Eiffel Tower, planning to print the photo when she was next in Parkes. Then she took out a pen and added to his note, Gorgeous day with Antonio in Paris. Kissed him at the top of the Eiffel Tower. First day of the rest of my life.
Epilogue
December had been mild and dry, and the rolling hills of the farm were silver with cut stubble. Rachael was heavy with the exhaustion of the flight from London and the long drive, and sweating as though she’d never lived here through twenty-eight summers. After the dead-winter of Europe, the heat had a wallop like a sledgehammer. But when she spotted the familiar band of trees before the drive, one of them hung with tinsel and a huge banner that read Welcome home!, none of the discomforts mattered.
Antonio aimed his camera through the open window. “We’re finally here?”
“I did warn you it was a long drive.”
He shot her a crooked smile. “Not complaining. These colors are amazing. Make it longer.”
Rachael’s chest filled with pride. Even after seven months in Europe, the drive home was eerily familiar—she could have been coming back from a trip into Milton or Parkes instead of all the way from Sydney. The only difference was the sense of freedom: coming home was so much more wonderful when you knew you had the choice to leave again. And after freezing London, the baking heat would be a luxury once she acclimatized.
The house appeared around the bend, its verandahs and pale roof promising cool relief. Rachael saw the children rushing in and out of the doors; no doubt they’d spotted the car. She remembered a time when she and Tess had done that, excited by every vehicle that came through the gate, running to find their mother.
Emily and Felix were waving; little Georgia, now nearly two, copying between them. Tess appeared just as Rachael pulled up, preventing the children swarming over the car in a bid to greet her first.
“What a reception!” Rachael laughed as she slid out of the seat and Emily and Felix grabbed a leg each. She leaned down and hugged their warm bodies, feeling their soft hair against her cheeks and breathing in their smell of bubble bath and dust.
“We missed you, Aunty Rachael,” said Felix as Rachael kissed him on the cheek. Shyly, he rubbed the kiss away.
“Did you bring us presents?” asked Emily.
They both peered around her at Antonio, who had climbed out of the passenger seat.
“Hey,” he called to them, then crouched so they were eye to eye. “I’m Antonio, but you can call me Ant. What’re your names?”
“Is that your camera?” Emily asked after the names had been supplied.
“Would you like to see? Perhaps you can both take some photos of each other?”
“Let Rachael and Antonio come inside,” scolded Tess.
Rachael hugged her sister amid the chaos. Tess had changed. Her face had smoothed out—the pinching around her eyes and mouth was gone—and she’d grown her hair longer. She was thinner, but in a muscled way that made Rachael wonder if she’d taken up running.
“You look great,” Rachael said.
Tess gave her a quick smile. “Too busy to eat,” she said, but in a jovial way that told Rachael it was only half the truth. “What have you done to your hair?”
Rachael gave it a self-conscious scrunch. It was shorter now, falling in a bob just below her ears; it was easier to keep that way, and she was experimenting with fashions.
The first month overseas had been a whirlwind of culture shock: the change from wide-open spaces to a huge city, from driving to catching the tube everywhere, and finding a place to live without bankrupting herself—all while starting an internship she felt woefully unprepared for.
She’d viewed it as a gateway job, something definite to go to in a strange place rather than hoping to land something once she got there. The work involved a lot of fact-checking and taking minutes of meetings and helping with research for the journalists working on feature stories. She was slow at the research, and hated calling people to ask for interviews or to clarify quotes. She’d spent several nights in her first room in a dingy hostel silently crying and wondering what the hell she’d been thinking. In those moments, her mother’s letter and the photos had been the only things helping her through to the next day.
Slowly, the bumps had evened out. She worked out how to research faster, avoiding all the dead ends she’d gotten trapped in at the beginning, and who in the office was the best person to teach her different skills. That was when she began to sew again, at night in her apartment with a secondhand machine, and went hunting all over town for high-end remnants for her projects.
Around the same time, Rachael had met three other Australians on working holidays in London—Liz from Perth, Ethan from Melbourne, and Ruby from Sydney. They were doing the pub quiz together at Rachael’s local one night when she walked in on her own, and heard her accent when she ordered dinner. Soon, Liz, the group’s natural social secretary, was organizing weekend trips to Avebury, Sherwood Forest, Ely Cathedral, and Paris. On that last trip, Rachael had wandered past the Arc de Triomphe and stared up at the little showroom on the top floor. Two months later, she’d posted a letter to Martine Bertrand with samples of her work.
Now, she hauled her case from the car trunk.
“I’ll take it,” Emily said, extracting the handle from Rachael and dragging it toward the house.
“Gently!” Tess said.
Then Rachael started, because standing in the doorway was Sammy, clutching a tiny sleeping baby to her chest. Rachael ran, stopping short only because she didn’t want to crush both of them.
“I thought you were coming later?” she whispered.
Sammy smiled. “You don’t have to whisper. Nothing seems to wake him. And I wanted to be here when you got in. Tess has been great helping out.”
“Can I see?” Rachael peered at the sweet snub face, only a few weeks old. She’d seen a photo Sammy had emailed around, but it hadn’t captured the long eyelashes or the sweet curve of his lips. “He’s beautiful. Are you getting any sleep?”
Sammy shrugged. “Not much. But I’ve still got energy. Ask me again in a month.”
“Right, all you kids, inside,” Tess said. “I thought you wanted to make White Christmas?”
Soon the children were installed at the kitchen table, a plastic drop sheet underneath them, happily stirring a vast bowl of Palmin, rice bubbles, glacé cherries, and white chocolate, and rolling spoonfuls into patty pans.
Antonio proved himself indispensable by slipping easily into the circle, claiming that he was used to it from all his Italian cousins. He and Joel kept the peace while Rachael, Sammy, and Tess sat in the lounge, catching up.
Rachael couldn’t help noticing how at home Tess looked in their mother’s old chair. The room itself was cozy and homey, with the big Christmas tree set in the corner, two stars now on top.
“I’ve told the children they can open one present each tonight, because tomorrow they have to wait until at least six,” Tess said.
A crash sounded out in the kitchen. A pause, then crying.
Tess rose. “Better go see how the world’s ending this time.”
As soon as she’d gone, Rachael squeezed Sammy’s arm. “How is everything? Really?”
Sammy’s hesitation was only slight. “All right. Marty’s been staying to help with Olly. Things aren’t great, but we are actually talking. I asked him if he wanted to do a test.” She paused, her lip in her teeth, then swallowed tears away. “He says he’s thinking about it, but he wants to know Olly better first. He admitted he was really ego-bruised about losing his job, and he shut down after that happened. He’s tired of being depressed about it, though, and he’s looking properly now, and considering the business idea again. The motel owner’s going to sell, so we’re even thinking whether we could buy that, as a start. So at least we’re working on everything, slowly. I don’t for a second think we’re all fine, but there’s hope.”
Rachael nearly cried herself, she was so relieved.
Sammy kissed Olly’s sleeping head and rested her cheek briefly against his downy hair. She craned her neck to see if Tess was coming back, then said quickly, “I’m sorry to ask this, but have you heard anything about Bonnie?”
“Not really.”
It wasn’t quite the truth. Bonnie had recently flown into London to launch a clothing label, and Rachael’s friends had been talking about it. Rachael had bitten her tongue and watched with interest. She knew that Bonnie and Matthew were still married, but noted that they were never seen in public together. She’d once come across a tabloid magazine speculating about what was happening between them, complete with long-range photos of them on holiday somewhere in the south of France. Her heart still skipped if she heard either of their names, but the butterflies of attraction were long gone. She knew she’d been incredibly stupid, and then incredibly lucky.
Antonio was helping. He’d been on assignment for two months when she’d landed in London, embedded with antipoaching teams in Africa. She’d been apprehensive about his return, but he was pleased to see her, and Rachael had felt more confident. After several weeks, they’d gone on a date. Then another. And another. And the slow burn of love he’d once talked about had gradually taken hold of her.
Finally, Rachael had been able to ask him about that week in Paris.
“I hadn’t realized the man you were talking about was the groom,” he’d said. “But you’re a beautiful woman—I don’t blame him.”
“You’re coming back tomorrow for lunch?” Rachael asked Sammy.
“Me and everyone else. Bernie and Beverley too, can you believe it?”
“That’s still going on?” Rachael was surprised.
“Yep. They’re even collaborating these days. Bernie’s decided not to move the bakery, but he’s opening a second store in Parkes.”
Olly stirred, and Sammy stood to walk around, shifting the baby’s weight to her other shoulder.
“So are you chucking it all in and coming home?” she asked.
Rachael glanced out the window before she answered. “Things have been touch and go sometimes. I was worried what I’d do when this job was over.”
“But?”
“But . . . I have an interview with a dressmaker in Paris in January, and I’ve applied to intern in dressmaking with two designers in London. Antonio gave me the photos he took of my dresses at the wedding to use as a portfolio. The pay’s even worse than this last job, but if I’m careful I might be able to come home once a year.”
“Woohoo,” Sammy said softly. “I knew this would work out for you. I really did.”
Rachael smiled, and sent silent thanks to the tree on the hill. There had been times on the farm when she’d thought she would never leave. Now, she wasn’t sure when she would return. She knew that whatever Sammy thought, things were far from worked out.
She missed her best friend dreadfully, and was still learning about herself and what she could do, but at least she was on her way. Tess and Joel’s farm had sold, so she had some money to keep going, and she could see they were the right ones to live here. Her mother would have loved to see the family together again, however briefly. Rachael’s home would always be here, but next week it would be time to fly again and see where her dreams might land.
“You just have to promise me one thing,” Sammy said. “Make sure you invite me to your wedding!”
Acknowledgments
The Paris Wedding was a challenging book to write. I would like to thank the many contributors, especially Paula Ellery and Rebekah Turner for their notes, my Sisters of the Pen writing group for all your help (Kim, Meg, Liz, Fi, and Nic), and all the staff at Hachette. Special thanks to Bek for being the best writing buddy ever.
As extended from the dedication, I would like to thank my mum, Isabella Nash, for her endless patience in teaching me to sew when I was young. I am not as good as Rachael in the story, but it’s a skill that has been invaluable, as has Mum’s continued support and encouragement in my adult life. Further thanks to my stepdad, Vic Blake, for the same.
